Last night, I found myself unusually drawn to a televised baseball game. It was the San Francisco Giants versus the Arizona Diamondbacks, a game that stretched into eighteen innings. Although I didn't watch all eighteen, I was glued to the set for its last three hours (it was about five hours, in total).
Rather indifferent about most sports, I have oddly developed a fondness for baseball. I watch baseball for all the wrong reasons, though.
Take last night, for example. I watched because I wanted to see how long the game could possibly last. I pictured a game well into 40 innings -- the players staggering off the field, pleading with their coaches to bring an end to the madness. I wanted to see what happened when they ran out of pitchers. I wondered how late it could get before even the diehard fans went home. I had to see which player cracked first.
Baseball doesn't work like that, I guess.
Oh well.
I'm like a little kid when it comes to baseball. Ben, whose baseball career spanned the ages of eight to sixteen, answers my questions with gleeful authority. Of course, my questions aren't always the most hard-hitting or rulebook guided:
"Why does the pitcher get to wear a jacket when he's on base?"
"What's wrong with metal bats?"
"Why can't the pitcher psych out the batter with a fake pitch?"
"What song would you have played when you come out to bat?"
Although my appreciation for the game is somewhat marred by the triviality of my interests, I do have a sincere respect for a game so dominated by statistics and records.
So much so, that I have challenged myself to the task of learning all of the stats of one baseball player.
My love of statistics first surfaced when I was eight years old and I discovered my father's almanacs. I spent hours pouring over facts and figures pertaining to history, sports, geography and celebrities. I learned about the deadliest earthquakes, floods and hurricanes with dread. As a patriotic duty, I memorized state birds and mottoes. I would comb through birthdates, looking for the oldest living celebrity. I lived for useless data.
When the almanacs served their purpose, I moved onto The People's Almanac Book of Lists.
Even though these books were published in the 1970s and I was reading them in the mid 1980s, my love of lists allowed me to see past their dated content. The Book of Lists read like an extended trivia supplement to a 1970's People magazine. Even so, I swallowed the dated fluff whole.
After all, what's more interesting than a list of Paul Williams's ten favorite children's books?
